Founder of sustainable clothing brand Boy Wonder is pretty amazing herself

Ashby-based sustainable clothing entrepreneur, Ismay Mummery, is a multiple award winner and finalist.  In 2021 she was named one of the most inspiring female entrepreneurs in the UK by f:Entrepreneur.  In August this year she won £10k worth of outdoor advertising in the Small Business Goes Big competition organised by Enterprise Nation, Adobe and JC Decaux Nurture.  Ismay is a widow with a 12 year old son – the Boy Wonder who inspired the brand.

Tell us about the choices you made in terms of building sustainability into your business

I’d always wanted to start a business and it was always going to be a green business, from top to bottom. Originally it was going to be menswear because that’s what I trained in. But after having my son, I saw there was a real gap in the market.  We went to live in Sweden for a year and the Scandinavian kids’ brands are so much further ahead on sustainability.  And they’re bright and colourful and quite gender neutral and that really inspired me to think “we need something like that here”.  So, that’s where the idea developed from.

In terms of embedding it in the business, there was a lot of research and planning in the beginning, six years ago, starting with sourcing the fabrics.  Initially I wanted to use all British fabrics as much as I could. I first did a whole sample range of coats, denimwear, trousers, shorts and even knitwear and soon became aware that it was difficult to find materials that were sustainable AND British-made.

I think the situation has got better now but at the time I had to compromise.

First Collection

I did my first Crowdfunder with the whole collection of samples but soon realised that I needed to focus on just the jersey wear and that’s all British-made cloth that’s made in Leicester by Discovery Knitting with organic-certified cotton.

That was a good outcome because then I could focus on the fact that the materials and the clothes are all British-made and printed less than 20 miles from my studio which reduces their carbon footprint enormously.

How long did that process take?

Oh gosh, it took a long time because it’s just me running the business.  It took a couple of years at least because, as well as sourcing, I was also thinking about the designs in terms of wanting them to be long-lasting garments.  The single biggest impact we can make environmentally, is lengthening the use of any products.  So I had the idea to build in extra room for growth, to provide repair kits and care guides.  I was also thinking about using mono-fibre fabrics rather than mixed because they biodegrade more easily.

I wrote about what I was learning in my blog.

What about areas such as distribution and managing waste?

Initially I put my offer out globally but after a while I decided to keep it within Britain to reduce the environmental impact of distribution.  I also researched the best delivery companies for CO2 and Royal Mail has the lowest CO2 per parcel. For bigger parcels I use UPS because they have the most  vehicles running on alternative fuel.

The most impactful process would have been printing the garments, so I was very keen to look at digital printing and tried various ones around the country. That was one of the biggest challenges I had because I wanted to use my own fabrics and most digital printers are not keen on doing this because their own fabrics are tried and tested. I eventually found a company in Leicester, Rialto Designs, who had a brand new top of the range £1m printer which is 100% waterless – so no pre-steaming or anything like that – and that’s about the lowest you can get in terms of environmental impact.

If I hadn’t had industry contacts I would never have found them so networks are really important.

In terms of waste, yes we have some because we’re cutting garments out of sheets of fabric. I keep all the waste and some of it goes to a charity called Dressability which makes some of it into sanitary products for girls in Ghana.  And the other waste I’m keeping for other projects I might want to do later.

In terms of energy, I work at home so I can control my scope 1 and 2 with a green energy tariff and an electric vehicle. The fabric manufacturers that I use have got a big push on at the moment to get solar panels fitted so that they can power their hybrid cars.  They’re trying to become fully renewable and have adjusted their machines to be more energy efficient.

For me ethics and sustainability go hand in hand, so my marketing promise is an ethical one that reflects my personal beliefs.  We can’t go on just producing more stuff so that kind of manipulative marketing that forces people to buy more than they need is not something I will ever do. I think people are fed up of businesses like that.  I think they want businesses to help them and give them the tools they need to be able to be more sustainable.

Of course, just a few decades ago, items of clothing would be passed down through your extended family as one child grew out of them.  Why doesn’t that happen anymore do you think?

We’ve lost the idea of valuing things in some way.  A lot of stuff that’s made these days is NOT good quality.  In France, they’ve introduced the idea of extended producer responsibility where they have to make sure a product lasts longer because they have to deal with the waste created at the end of that item’s life.  So hopefully that will introduce some kind of shift in attitudes.

When you launched, did you have a sense of who your customers were going to be and that they would value sustainability? Or did you just try it and see who bought it?

I tried it and saw who bought it.  Right now, it’s very hard to find the customers.  With Brexit, the Pandemic and the cost of living increases, it’s really hard.  Some people are thinking that they could buy kids’ clothes much more cheaply than the ones I’m selling so we still need to educate them about the longer term value of a garment that’s designed to be long-lasting.

We need to be custodians of things rather than consumers and people who throw things away after only a short time.

Perhaps I’m a little bit ahead of the curve in promoting that idea and I will need to work out how my business is going to survive until the point at which society makes that shift in its attitude towards fast fashion and consumerism.

I also try to promote the idea of buying pre-loved clothes, swapping and things like that.  I’m hoping to launch a couple of pre-loved items soon, where I’ll give them new life with decoration.

Building a following before the launch

I didn’t really just launch my clothes into the market cold.  I’d been blogging for three or four years before that, trying to build an audience and take them on this sustainability journey.  I did that deliberately on a friend’s advice as a way of showing what I value and how these values would be part of my brand.  (Ismay has had over 55,000 visitors on her websites to date).

Your social media content looks very sophisticated and you seem very good at it.  Did that come naturally to you?

No, I had to learn it.  I have a design background so could create visual content but I recently did a digital bootcamp with (Leicester-based) Anicca Digital who helped me to pass a professional qualification in digital marketing which is very useful.

What do you think about getting someone else to share the workload with you, whether that’s an employee or an apprentice?

It’s just not the right time now as business is so tough but I would love to get to that stage.  I have thought about an intern but not gone any further with that just yet.  Hopefully, the billboard campaign will generate a rise in sales and we’ll get some income for the autumn.

Visit the Boy Wonder website here.

Ismay was speaking to Peter Allen